To ease using this library on platforms other than Android, I have added an autotools based build system and done a minor portability fix, and released this code as fdk-aac 0.1.0 today.

This project is hosted at sourceforge, under the opencore-amr project, acting as an umbrella project for these codecs that are repackaged from Android as standalone libraries, just as opencore-amr, vo-amrwbenc and vo-aacenc before this one.

I in general intend to limit this project to minor tweaks and portability fixes - for anything larger than that, I'd prefer if it first is contributed upstream, to keep the difference between the upstream code and this library as small as possible.

I wonder if it's the same or similar encoder as Winamp FhG AAC. It has the same number of VBR modes (the last version of past year). If it's the case then it will be a first high quality open source AAC encoder.

I wonder if it's the same or similar encoder as Winamp FhG AAC. It has the same number of VBR modes. If it's the case then it will be a first high quality open source AAC encoder. w00t.gif

I hope this is true

It certainly looks like the real thing to me... (I don't know if this is Winamps encoder, but it's certainly a full-featured encoder not based on any code I've seen, with full psymodel, smart bitallocation etc)

I had posted one but it was removed due to :patents: (even though the VisualOn binary is still allowed... I dunno why.)

Looks like you'll have to compile from source yourself, of use the magic of the Internet to find one.

I am not a lawyer, but here is the part of the license that is problematic for use of this source code in other projects

CODE

51 3. NO PATENT LICENSE 52 53 NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED LICENSES TO ANY PATENT CLAIMS, including without limitation the patents of Fraunhofer, 54 ARE GRANTED BY THIS SOFTWARE LICENSE. Fraunhofer provides no warranty of patent non-infringement with 55 respect to this software. 56 57 You may use this FDK AAC Codec software or modifications thereto only for purposes that are authorized 58 by appropriate patent licenses.

I am not a lawyer, but here is the part of the license that is problematic for use of this source code in other projects

CODE

51 3. NO PATENT LICENSE 52 53 NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED LICENSES TO ANY PATENT CLAIMS, including without limitation the patents of Fraunhofer, 54 ARE GRANTED BY THIS SOFTWARE LICENSE. Fraunhofer provides no warranty of patent non-infringement with 55 respect to this software. 56 57 You may use this FDK AAC Codec software or modifications thereto only for purposes that are authorized 58 by appropriate patent licenses.

I don't think that would be a problem for most open source licenses. Off hand I can't think of any that force you to also provide patent licenses to go with the software license, since in practice that would be almost impossible to know which patents were covered and which were not. IIUC, that basically leaves you in the same place as the GPL, you're allowed under copyright law but patent law is up to you and your country.

The extra statements in the license are there because it's a BSD-style license, and there's some line of legal arguing (not confirmed in court. and quite arguable, but still) that says that BSD licensed software comes with an implicit patent license. FhG especially doesn't want to give you such a license because they make money from AAC patents, which is why they add that clarification.

(Note that even if FhG had given an implicit or explicit license, there are still many AAC patents they don't own. So you can't distribute AAC encoder binaries without a patent license. Please don't post illegal stuff here, which means no encoder binaries unless you have an actual licensing deal.)